Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.
Three highballs, and I think I'm St. Francis of Assisi.
One more drink and I'd have been under the host.
Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation. ' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.
Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour. . . the glamour of Isadora Duncan came from her great, torn, bewildered, foolhardy soul.
If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.
Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, And pristine is my hat My dress is 1922… My life is all like that.
If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.
What writes worse than a Theodore Dreiser?. . . Two Theodore Dreisers.
My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He'll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway of the morrows. He'll live his days where the sunbeams start, Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart, -- And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
The only dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.
My land is bare of chattering folk; the clouds are low along the ridges, and sweet's the air with curly smoke from all my burning bridges.
Where unwilling dies the rose; buds the new another year.
The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. The boys have gone hog-wild with liberty, yet the short flat terms used over and over, both in dialogue and narrative, add neither vigor nor clarity; the effect is not of shock but of something far more dangerous — tedium.
I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.
I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.
Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
[On an actor who'd broken her leg in London:] Oh, how terrible. She must have done it sliding down a barrister.
Oh, seek, my love, your newer way; I'll not be left in sorrow. So long as I have yesterday, Go take your damned tomorrow!
A girl's best friend is her mutter.